


Outcasts always Mourn

by ineffablenerd



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Has Wilde not been hurt enough?, Irish Language, Japan Gap, M/M, No he hasnt, irish wilde
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-05
Updated: 2020-11-05
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:22:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27404224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ineffablenerd/pseuds/ineffablenerd
Summary: "Wilde wraps himself in languages like silks. Silver tongued and sharp witted he builds walls and labyrinths around himself so nobody may enter. He controls his emotions and his life, so no one may hear him slip out of the familiar cage of high Oxford pretense even for just a moment."
Relationships: Zolf Smith/Oscar Wilde
Comments: 17
Kudos: 97





	Outcasts always Mourn

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ChaosMidge (NotQuiteInsane)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NotQuiteInsane/gifts).



> Thanks Sav for the Beta and thanks to the When in Rome Server for allowing my Brand to be "making things Worse"

There are many languages at the inn.  
Japanese, obviously. English, of course.

A few languages lay at the wayside for now.  
French, Czech, Gnommish, German, Arabic.

Some languages are ones without words at all.  
The language of bringing up dinner when there is too much work to stop and eat. The language of a comforting hand on a shoulder tense with grief. The language of a knowing look between friends.

And there is a language that is hidden.  
Hidden deep inside the heart of a bard who dares not to sing.

It is the language of his mother. The language his sister breathed her last breaths in as she lay in his arms, burning up from a fever. The language his magic has always had the most power in. He has no power now.

A language he had to lock up and bury deep within himself the second he set food on English ground. A language of which he had eradicated every trace from his tongue so easily at Oxford.

Barely anyone knows anything about Wilde's heritage at all, and that is by design. English society isn't known for its variety in character and geographic heritage. When someone asks what languages another speaks it better be the right ones. Gaelic is not one of the right ones. Not even for the light entertainment a charming bard is expected to bring to an event. He learned that the hard way. So he doesn't sing his country's songs or tell their stories anymore.

His mother still sings them in his dreams. And his nightmares.  
In them, she curses him for leaving. For shunning his blood. For letting Isola die. Every mistake he has ever made and then some more. When he wakes up, he cries in her voice.

Wilde wraps himself in languages like silks. Silver tongued and sharp witted he builds walls and labyrinths around himself so nobody may enter. He controls his emotions and his life, so no one may hear him slip out of the familiar cage of high Oxford pretense even for just a moment.

But with polite society being nothing more than a distant memory, the walls become hollow. Too old, too sturdy to crumble just because the original premise of them is gone, and they become a prison just as much as they have been a refuge. His only allies, his closest friends, do not know his true voice.

When they go on missions he whispers old Gaelic wayside blessings from the window of his office.

Go n-ardóidh an bóthar chun bualadh leat.  
 _May the road rise to meet you._

Dé idir tú féin agus gach dochar.  
 _Gods between you and all harm._

His shackles keep him from filling the words with the magic he craves to give to them. He hopes they work regardless.

When they come back, beaten but alive, he puts on one more mask for one more week and locks them in a cell.

In the nights, he walks out into the rain, desperate for the familiar green hills of his home. Japan reminds him of them. If only just.

He sings out here, knowing not a soul can hear, and no one in a thousand thousand miles can understand the words.  
He sings of love and loss, of uncertainty and grief. He sings of the sea and what it gives and who it takes. He sings of the rolling hills and winding roads. He sings of his parents and his brother. And if he cries, the rain washes away the evidence of it.

When the week is over and they are safe, they drink. They are exhausted, they are ecstatic. Wilde is good at looking like he drinks more than he does. He knows how quickly drink can loosen a tongue or broaden it beyond recognition. He watches the others as they laugh and Zolf tells a story about his time as a pirate. He doesn't tell many stories, being almost as private as Wilde, just differently so.

Zolf is a great storyteller. He tells them with his arms and his face as much as with his words. He isn't eloquent and he doesn't need to be. The way he swallows some letters and rolls others only adds to it. Wilde can almost hear the ship creak beneath his feet as Zolf tells them a story of someone going overboard, only being held back by his shoelaces. It is a stupid story. It brings tears to Wilde's eyes with its raw edges. There's not pretense in it. No polish to make it shine for society to enjoy.  
In everyone else's eyes they are tears of laughter and he hopes no one sees the difference.

Carter tries to make Barnes sing a shanty. The former commander looks sheepish and deflects to Zolf again, citing Navy etiquette. Zolf turns to Wilde.

"You know songs right? You were all entertaining and stuff to those fancy people before everything, so you have to know some songs."

"I don't think any of London's high society's songs would be of any interest." He is correct of course. The sonnetts and arias of the rich don't work here. They have no use other than make rich people feel smart and educated.

"This is the atmosphere for a shanty. Or a jig." He means to say that he's not going to share.

"So do you know any of those?" Carter has his eyes set on him now.

"Well..." he's gotten himself into this now he has got to talk himself out. There are many jigs, not all of them are irish. But when has he last heard one? "I can't think of any."

"That's obviously a lie." Zolf is too good at piercing right through the labyrinth and right into his mind.

"I know one but I don't know if...", Wilde takes a moment to close his eyes and gather his trust in his friends. These are not any drinking mates in univerity, running him straight out of the club for starting the wrong song. These are the only true allies left.

" _While in the merry month of May, from me home I started_  
 _Left the girls of Tuam nearly broken hearted_  
 _Saluted father dear, kissed me darling mother  
Drank a pint of beer, me grief and tears to smother_"

He hasn't sung inside a room for a long time. It is not something you forget how to do. The other patrons turn their heads to the foreigners and stop their conversations. Entertainment is rare these days, even if you don't understand a word.

" _Then off to reap the corn, leave where I was born  
Cut a stout black thorn to banish ghosts and goblins  
A brand new pair of brogues to rattle o'er the bogs  
And fright'ning all the dogs on the rocky road to Dublin_"

Barnes starts clapping through the chorus while Carter stamps out a beat.

" _One, two, three, four, five,  
Hunt the Hare and turn her down the rocky road  
All the way to Dublin, whack follol de rah_"

When he finishes he looks at the floor. The first audience in a lifetime and it's a jig from his school days.

"Didn't know you had some Irish jigs in yer Wilde. Ya posh bastard!" Carter gives him a light punch on the shoulder.

"Always loved a good jig," Barnes chimes in.

Zolf looks at him funny. then leans close so only Wilde can hear his whisper:

"So where did that accent come from." Wilde's eyes narrow then widen as he realizes he did not keep his trained voice for the song. Too lost in the sounds of his home to notice the Dublin creep back into it.

Barnes and Carter are wrapped up in a discussion about something and don't see when Wilde swallows hard and grips at his own hands. "It's how the song goes." A terrible lie. Songs don't have accents. People do. He knows that better than anyone.

"I hate when posh english pricks pretend the jig is funnier in a dialect. You're not better than anyone for saying some letters different." Zolf pats him on the shoulder and joins into the discussion on the difference between a shanty and a jig like he said nothing at all.

Wilde wants to reach out. Say that this is not what happened. But he doesn't.

There is no more singing in the inn that night. Wilde excuses himself abruptly but instead of going to bed he wanders out onto the hills again. He walks all the way up a cliff and sits down at the edge. It's almost like home. He doesn't pretend not to weep. There's no one here to see.

_You played yourself. You are so good at being English no one believes you when you sound like you're not._

The voice in his head sounds like his father.

_Isn't that what you always wanted? Get rid of your blood, and become one of them?_

He screams down into the sea then. Curses in English, French, German, Greek, Japanese, Arabic, every language he can speak.

And finally Gaelic.

He curses the Sea for separating him from his mother's earth. The meritocrats for offering him this cursed job in the first place. The World for going to shit. Carter for bringing up songs. And himself for singing them. For all the choices he has made that led to Zolf thinking he was just an English prick making fun of the accents "lesser" than him, not the other way around.

He screams for a very long time, trying to get rid of his cursed voice. The rain starts again and by the time the sun comes up he is soaked to the bone and shivering, his voice is gone.

He doesn't get up, even though he knows that soon they will come looking for him. He doesn't care. They wouldn't know who he was when they found him anyways.

He falls asleep at the cliff, the taste of blood and speaking his mother's tongue still on his lips.

* * *

He wakes up on the familiar hard cot in the anti magic cell. His clothes are dry, different than what he was wearing before. His brain is hazy. Someone must have brought him here. So someone has to be there. A painful sting fills his lungs when he tries to call out. His voice fails.

"We checked you while you were out cold and you don't seem to be visibly infected _yet_." comes a familiar voice from the darkness beyond the cell. "But something is wrong with you."

Wilde tries to speak again and nothing but a soft croak leaves his lips.

Zolf's voice is calm as stone. "We don't know why you were out there and I can't heal you in here so you'll have to wait your stupidity out until we can get our hands on something else. Barnes is trying to send a runner to that alchemist village we've heard about for a healing potion but it's gonna take a while."

Wilde just nods. He feels dizzy. Hot and cold. He might have a fever but who could say. He lies back on the cot.

* * *

When he wakes again, his sight flimmers with heat while he shivers from the cold. He is drenched in sweat. When he starts to sit up, vertigo slams him back down.

"Cabhrú" _help_. His voice is barely more than whisper and his lungs sting with the breath it takes to produce the single sound. No one answers.  
He tries again. Trying for the right words. What language is this again? Where is he again?

He falls through his cot into the fire. Or the sea. He's drowning in it and someone else is there with him. Small hands on his, shivering with him.

* * *

He awakes screaming this time.

"Isola! Cá bhfuil tú!?" _Isola, where are you?_

"Tar chugam!" _Come to me!_

He begins to weep as the walls of the cell settle back around him in cold darkness. The air is still shimmering with the haze in front of his eyes. He is covered with a thin blanket. Was that there the last time he woke up?

He hears noises through a tunnel far away. The rustling of paper, the creak of metal. A candle burns his eyes as it sputters to life.

"Fuck, Wilde. This isn't good." The bearded face flickering in the candle light looks pale with deep shadows under its eyes. He looks worried. "Who's Isola?"

"My sister." english feels heavy on Wilde's tongue. Everything feels heavy. He turns away from the light and lets the fiery oceans of the fever overtake him again.

* * *

When his consciousness settles into him once again there's voices outside the door. Clearly arguing.

"We can't let him stay down there he'll die."

"If he's infected he'll kill all of us."

"It's been 4 days and still nothing he wasn't even that far from the inn. We made sure the surroundings are safe. I don't even know how he could get infected. There's just the sea out there with not a soul to get infected _from_."

"You know the rules, if someone was out of sight for an indeterminate amount of time or behaves strangely, he's in there for a week."

"I helped write the rules Barnes I know what they say. But he's got a fever of 'bout a hundred degrees and he can barely breathe. We can put him back in his cuffs and if he turns in a state like this he won't be a threat anyways."

Wilde sinks back into the darkness. He can hear is own breathing, shallow and laboured, it slowly rises and overtakes his ears, he dreams of drowning again. Lights flash past and weights start settling on his chest, then they disappear.

* * *

He wakes up for real this time. The bed is soft and there's light streaming in from a window. The fever is still there but broken and his lungs don't seem to be filled with boiling water anymore. Or was that a dream?

There's the rustling sound of pages being turned from beside the bed. It isn't through a tunnel this time. Turning his head makes him dizzy but he does it anyways.

Zolf is sitting a careful distance away, reading one of his novels.

"Is it any good?" Wilde's voice is still coarse but it works again. English sounds foreign. All his dreams have been in Irish.

"Always" Zolf closes the book and focuses on Wilde. "So you're awake now." He looks him up and down.

"Head's still swimming. But better." Wilde tries a winning smile but it barely lifts the corners of his mouth.

"Took my healing out for the entire day. You got yourself a whole lungs worth of pneumonia." Zolf looks tired. Has he slept at all? How long has it been?

"Thank you." He tries to piece together a timeline. There had been drinking. Rain. Cold. Screaming. "How long have I been out for?"

"We found you 6 days ago. Passed out on the cliff behind the inn. You came to a couple of times crying or screaming but were out before anyone could talk to you. It took all of my diplomacy to convince Barnes to let you out of that cell and up here so I could heal you. You almost died."

Wilde's head is still swimming. He remembers why he went to the cliffs, but there's no way he can tell Zolf that. He closes his eyes again but he can feel Zolf looking at him.

"What." He opens his eyes again.

"Why were you out there?"

"Cursing the rain." He knows he sounds flippant. He does it on purpose.

"Wow, that's not suspicious at all." Zolf opens his book again.

Wilde tries to go back to sleep, but apparently he's done with that for now. He fills his fluid-less lungs with air and tries humming a light song. It's not steady but it's not horrible, his voice will probably be fine.

"You should go easy on that for a bit. You were basically bleeding from your throat when we found you."

"Not like I use it for a lot of things these days." The fever keeps him from hiding the bitterness completely.

"Except screaming for your sister in your sleep." Oh. _that_. right. "Why were you screaming in Irish?"

"Why do you need to know?" Wilde knows what he sounds like. An asshole. Zolf saved his life and he's being an asshole. He sighs.

"I was born there." He doesn't give Zolf the chance to respond to that "Why do you care."

Zolf take a deep breath and closes his eyes for a moment.

"I know literally nothing about you Wilde. I know the parts where I was _there_ and I know two security questions for communications without _any_ context for them whatsoever and that's it."

"Good."

"Fine." Zolf slams his book shut again and gets up to leave. Just like Wilde wants him to. Let him be alone.

He turns his back to the door.

Zolf is still in the room. He can feel his eyes on him. He pretends not to notice.

"Keeping people out isn't a way to live Oscar. It never was but even less so with the world like this." Then Wilde finally hears the sound of metal feet retreating.

His eyes fill with tears. He didn't choose this. He hadn't started out like this.  
He tries to sleep again but his consciousness stubbornly stays put despite the remnants of the fever still swirling through his brain.

What does Zolf know? He has never been anyone but himself in his life. Zolf had never had to change himself so much he wasn't able to change back. Who was he to tell him to share more? Like he was such an open book himself. Especially right now.

Everything that someone else knows about you can and will be used against you. That is Wilde's experience, philosophy and credo. Every piece of himself that he shows to another soul is carefully crafted to be exactly what it needs to be. That's the way it has always been. Ever since Oxford. Even with Robbie, with Bosie... he had been right back then and he was right now. Giving pieces of yourself away only makes you vulnerable. Like giving someone a knife and expecting them not to stab you.

* * *

He must have fallen asleep again at some point because he wakes up the next morning when Zolf clanks into the room with a breakfast tray.

"Healing first or breakfast first?" Zolf barely looks at him while he asks.

"I think I'll be ok with just breakfast, thank you." The fever is basically gone. If he doesn't move too fast, he can probably get some work done. There's a week of paperwork waiting for him, including everything the crew found out on their last mission.

"You sure? You don't look all up there yet." Zolf's eyes pierce right through his soul and Wilde tries to focus on breakfast without looking like he looked away.

"If you want to pump something into me all you need to do is ask." Not his best work, but it's a step back to normal. He bites into one of the riceballs like he has no care in the world. It's amazing, it's the first thing he's eaten in a week. It tastes like walls and masks and lies.

"So you're gonna keep that up then." Wilde feels Zolf's eyes turn away. "The posh accent and everything."

That hits. But Wilde is good at not letting it show. He finishes the onigiri and grabs another. He wills his hands not to shake.

"The world is not as simple as you make it Mr. Smith." the enunciation is sharp enough to stab him through the heart.

It should be like all the other ways he has deflected people. Rotated them out of the hall of mirrors that was _'Oscar Wilde'_ until they weren't sure which parts of him they know when, really, none of him was real at all. But it feels different this time. Maybe because it's the end of the world. Because it's Zolf. Because it's about this.

"Fine." Zolf turns around on his heels and leaves. In the doorway he stops. He doesn't turn. "I'll send up Barnes for the final inspection."

* * *

Barnes is methodical about it. He makes Wilde turn around twice to be sure, even when he has to steady himself a bit to stand upright.  
Of course there are no veins. But he's cleared now and can go back to work.

Everything can go back to normal now.

He gets dressed and walks to his office. It's not a long way but when he gets there he's already out of breath. He should have taken that healing. But Gods he's not going to ask for it now.

His desk looks the same as last week except for a big black ledger right on top of everything else. The loot from the last mission. He opens it with a sigh and begins the slow, tedious work of cross checking every entry with every information they have until they find something-- _anything_ \--that can help.

* * *

He doesn't go downstairs for dinner. It's not that he's not hungry, or that he's so engrossed in the work, but the thought of climbing down the stairs and back up is daunting. As is the prospect of a silent dinner with everyone staring at him. He's not in the mood for playing Oscar Wilde, entertainer. He's not in the mood to play any Oscar Wilde they know.  
So he stays in his office. The ledger is actually useful and can act as a good excuse if anyone asks. The room grows dark as he keeps working. He lights one of the oil lamps, even though oil is in short supply. He can't handle the flickering light of a candle while his head is still swimming.

Some time later he feels like he's being watched. He raises his head and sees Zolf standing in the door frame, holding a bowl of something that is slightly steaming.

"I'm working." He casts his eyes back to his work, where he realises he hasn't registered anything he read in about two pages.

"I'm not here to fight you. You need to eat." Zolf walks over and plants the bowl right on top of Wilde's notes.

"Fine. I'll eat. Anything else?" he can hear the strained tremor in his voice and hopes the aggressiveness hides it from Zolf's ears.

"Yes. Give me your hand." Zolf reaches out. Wilde is too perplexed to stop him.

The second Zolf's warm hand covers his it's like light is being poured into him. The lightheadedness and remnants of the fever dissipate and he can feel his lungs expand into a sigh of comfort before he can stop them.

"Knew it." Zolf takes his hand back and Wilde can only just stop his from reacting to the sudden cold by grasping after it. "If you needed more healing you should have just said."

"I'm fine. It was nothing." he stabs at his stew. It smells amazing again, of course it does.

"Didn't feel like nothing. Felt like someone severely unwell pretending not to be for no good reason." Zolf is angry. He tries to hide it but he's not good at that.

"My wellbeing is my own concern Mr. Smith. Not yours." _Stop! Caring!_ He wants to scream. _let me be! You don't know me! The Oscar Wilde you know doesn't exist!_ He smiles his coldest smile at him like weapon.

Zolf isn't having it. "The hell it is! Even if you hate all of us so much and if it's all about the mission for you, think of it this way: You die, we all die. You do shoddy work because you're sick: we all die. You go down because you're too selfish to accept any help: this mission is over, and the world is doomed. That is what you're doing right now. If we're all just a mission to you, then at least get that right."

Zolf storms out and Wilde can hear him cursing under his breath. He looks down at his stew. He's not hungry anymore.

* * *

The next few days pass slowly. Wilde avoids mealtimes and Zolf stops bringing food up to him. When he goes down into the kitchen late at night there's always something left for him to eat anyways. Neither of them acknowledges it.

Wilde can't explain to himself why the situation is so upsetting to him. He _did_ want these people to be just the mission. But the longer the mission went, the blurrier the line got. He'd always put on masks, faces that changed and swirled to fit best to get what he wanted from whomever he was talking to. This is just him being sucessful at it.

_Because it's Zolf_ says a quiet voice inside his head. _That's why you're upset. Because you want him to know you_.  
 _Because you upset him with what you aren't and have no clue who you are._

Who is Oscar Wilde.

He's not a journalist anymore. He's not a meritocratic agent. He's not a harlequin. He is not English or high society, but he has forgotten how not to seem like it. Is there even a real Oscar Wilde?

Or is it just masks and personas all the way down.

* * *

At least the ledger is helpful. It gives him something to do. To think about. Being productive helps.

He finds a new lead. There's always a new lead somewhere. No matter how small.

He gathers the other three in his office for the brief after dinner. He keeps it short. There is not much to say and he avoids looking at Zolf while he forms the sharp vowels and articulate consonants that describe their next mission.

It's just another raid. But they might have another ledger. And that ledger might have more information.

They are following rotten breadcrumbs and they all know it. But no one objects as Wilde hands them the coordinates. There is no reason to wait but a good night's sleep, so everyone turns to leave for bed. Zolf is the last one out the door and he almost hesitates, but then he doesn't.

When the three of them leave in the morning, Wilde keeps his head to the paperwork.

He doesn't watch them leave from his windows, and he stays silent this time. He has nothing left to say. The usual blessing burns on his tongue but he swallows it down. What good is it without magic? Without faith?

He goes through the ledger again.

And again as the sun wanders across the sky behind the cover of clouds.

They shouldn't be away for so long.

They should have been back by now.

He reads the ledger again.

Two pages are stuck together. With trembling fingers he peels them apart.

How could he have missed this? Two more pages of orders means more shipments to protect.

He's halfway out of the door running before his mind even catches up to him.

He sent them out to slaughter.

* * *

He finds them almost at the halfway point. The steam coming off his horse is obscuring his vision almost as much as the rain does and he almost rides past them on the side of the road.  
Three horses seeking shelter underneath withering trees, two people ignoring the rain, cowering next to a third.

Wilde slides off his horse and doesn't bother tethering it anywhere before he runs toward them.

With Zolf lying broken in front of him, blood seeping into the earth, Oscar's masks fall. The mask of 'the mission comes first' the mask of 'You are the team and I am the handler' the mask of 'I'm better off alone'. He sinks to his knees the blood soaking his clothes almost as fast as it is draining out of Zolf.  
 _This is his fault.  
_ He should have done more research.  
He should have seen them off properly.  
He should have he should have he should have.

"We were ambushed on our way out. We didn't know he took a hit until he fell off his horse." Carter's voice fades away as Oscar tries to take in the damage.

The cuffs are off before his mind catches up to him. He doesn't know how to heal or if the unknown curse will strike him down while he's trying but it's all he has.  
His face is wet with salt and his voice almost breaks as he starts singing. A song his mother used to sing. The song he sang his sister to sleep with even as she was thrashing with fever dreams.

_Fill fill a rún ó_  
 _Fill a rún ó_   
I _s ná h’imigh uaim_  
 _Fill orm a chuisle ‘s a stóir_  
 _Agus chifidh tú ‘n glór má fhillean tú_

Come back, come back my love  
Come back my love don't part from me  
Come back to me my love and treasureAnd you will see glory when you return

The energy pulses around him in a dance as his voice, drenched in magic, multiplies into a choir.  
A ring of shamrocks sprouts in a circle around them and wilts just as fast as it bloomed.  
The smell of rain on grass, of salt and seaweed, of fires in stone fireplaces fills the air as Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde sings a race against death in his ancestors' voice.

The flowing blood slows down. Is it working? Or is there just no more blood left.  
Are the wounds starting to close? Or is it just an illusion Wilde made for himself.

He keeps singing and singing, willing his love back to him until the sound is gone from his voice and only the magic remains. And still he keeps singing.

There is no blood wet on his knees anymore. He keeps singing.  
There is scarred skin where a huge gash on Zolf's side used to be, tearing through the picture of a lighthouse in a storm. He keeps singing.

He doesn't even know he's holding Zolf's hand until it twitches in his and grasps at his wrist as Zolf gasps a lung full of the irish air still swirling around him.

Oscar has barely a moment to feel relieved before his head hits the ground next to Zolf as the magic takes it's toll.

He's ripped back to consciousness almost instantly by the force of the curse returning. He doesn't have the air in him to scream. Barnes and Carter are right beside him. Were they there the entire time? Or did they rush in when they saw Zolf breathe, when they saw Wilde collapse? He feels the magic cut off as Carter closes the clasps of the cuffs. He tastes blood in his mouth. His throat is barely more than a mass of open flesh at this point. It is of no consequence.

He scrambles back over to Zolf. He is unconscious, but he is breathing. Oscar stares at the slow but steady movement of his chest in disbelief.

"You did good Wilde." Barnes' quiet voice breaks a silence that sneaked up on them.

Did he? It's his fault Zolf ended up like this in the first place.

* * *

They return to the inn. Wilde can't remember how.

How they got there. How they redressed Zolf. If they bathed. If they ate.

He stays at Zolf's bedside and refuses to leave lest Zolf wake up alone.

They let him.

He doesn't trust himself enough to take off the shackles again. He is not a healer. And in any case, Zolf doesn't seem to have any injuries anymore. He just doesn't wake up.

As day turns into night and into day again, Oscar sits at Zolf's side and talks with voiceless breath. Words are all he has left and it doesn't matter if Zolf can hear him.

He tells stories of his childhood. About his older brother, his parents. He tells him about Isola, how small she was when she died. That he never lost suspicion that his mother blamed him for it.

In the dead of night he whispers about Oxford and how he threw away any trace of his home. How he lost the voice he learned to sing in and how he fears it to be gone forever.

In hushed tones he tries to explain how it all went so wrong. He doesn't know if he's explaining it to Zolf or himself. He takes several tries to apologize for the maze of choices that lead them to this. To Zolf being rightfully angry at an Oscar Wilde that doesn't exist.

"Please wake up so I can never forgive you for calling me english."

He tries to smile through it but tears wash any resemblance of jokes from his face.

When he runs out of stories, he forces sound back into his throat even though it still has a coarse and bloodied edge. He hums childhood tunes about dancing rabbits and ducks in ponds. About herding sheep and asking your mother to let you go to the fair.

At no point does he ever let go of Zolf's hand. The broad fingers and rough callouses become to him as familiar as his own as he cradles them between his. Between healing, cooking and fighting he has seen these hands do so many incredible things.

He prays. To no one in particular. He has never done anything to gain favour from the gods. He turns a childrens rhyme into a plea

_What will I give to see him again_  
 _to see him again_  
 _to see him again_  
 _What will I give to see him again_   
_le dúlsaí dolseí daéireó_

_I will give everything to hold him again_  
 _to hold him again_  
 _to hold him again_   
_I will give everything to hold him again_  
 _le dúlsaí dolseí daéireó_

A stray ray of sunshine breaks through the rain and illuminates Oscar's hands intertwined with Zolf's A whisper like light and sunshine fills his heart. It sings a final chorus

_That is enough to save him for now_   
_to save him for now_   
_to save him for now_   
_that is enough to heal him again_   
_le dúlsaí dolseí daéireó_

The voice vanishes together with the feeling of light and warmth that accompanied it. Zolf stirrs and the hand Oscar is holding twitches and squeezes back against his cold fingers.

"ar chaill tú mé Oscar?" _did you miss me?_ Oscar barely contains a sob as he brings their joined hands up to his lips.

"Fáilte ar ais." He whispers into them as he kisses the anchor on the back of Zolf's hand.

_Welcome back_

**Author's Note:**

> So the Songs mentioned / referenced in Order of appearance are:  
> \- Rocky Road to Dublin  
> \- Fill, fill a rún ó  
> \- Cé a chuirfidh tú liom
> 
> I listened to one playlist constantly writing this:
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLswagK_VjkWs6nboT9LdcX2kqBXmFEwnA
> 
> all the smaller mentioned songs like the one about the ducks and the one about the rabbits are also in there.  
> I really reccomend them. Irish Gaelic is a beautiful language.


End file.
